The development of Islamic political thought in relation to the West during the mid-twentieth century
Abstract
This research is about the development of Islamic political thought in relation to
the West during the mid-twentieth century. It utilizes the ideas and writings of the
Islamic thinkers Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, Ali Shariati of Iran, and Jalal Al-e Ahmad of Iran
to illustrate this development. These figures reacted severely to Westernization (argued to
constitute colonialism, materialism, and secularism) as they saw it. This research will
argue that their reaction was due to the fatally corrosive effects each figure believed this
was having upon Islamic civil society and the Islamic moral economy, both in their
respective home homelands and throughout the greater global Ummah. Their perspective
is unique because they were critiquing the West based upon their experiences while in the
West, and using Western intellectual ideas to do so. This was done, this research
contends, in reaction to aspects of Edward Said’s Orientalism discourse. Qutb, Shariati,
and Al-e Ahmad’s reaction to the West, this research also argues, displays aspects of
Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought, namely that when an entity (in this case, Islam) encounters
the West, God is lost in that encounter. Additionally, this research argues that Qutb,
Shariati, and Al-e Ahmad sought to counter the loss of God in Islamic civil society and
halt the influence of Westernization as they saw it via the political realm through the use
of the Quran as law and government, thereby permanently restoring God to Islamic civil
society and salvaging the Islamic moral economy.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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